In the blessedly quiet and still ballpark, four hours before game time, John Gibbons is playing catch with his kid.

Was out there with 13-year-old Kyle the night before too, on the field of a Rogers Centre decanted of spectators, after Toronto had finally snapped an ugly — likely fatal — seven-game losing streak.

It was pleasing to see, you know? The sweeter side of baseball, moments of pure ease, almost intimate — scenes replicated in countless backyards and corner lots.

For the Blue Jays manager and his dad, the earliest memory he can dredge up of similar ball-toss bonding occurred in Goose Bay, Labrador. “I played my first Little League game there.’’ The senior Gibbons was career air force and the family moved repeatedly until settling in San Antonio when John was in the fourth grade. Asked what accent he manifested then, before absorbing the southern drawl that now characterizes his speech — making him sound misleadingly rube — Gibbons scratches his noggin. “That’s a good question. Both my parents were from Boston. I tell everybody that’s the a--hole in me.’’ He cracks himself up. “You guys would probably all agree with that.’’

He’s referring to the clump of reporters who have sidled into his office down the corridor from the clubhouse for the usual pre-game yak, in the idling hours before Toronto, in long-ball emphatic fashion, rallied to annihilate the Houston Astros 12-6. Edwin Encarnacion, with a brace of home runs in the seventh inning, the second a grand salami, was Goliath of the Jays.

Anyway, where were we? Right, baseball is endlessly about shooting the breeze.

In truth, there’s probably no one here who would call Gibbons by a colloquial term for anus. Broadly speaking, the Blue Jays skipper, in his second time around, does not provoke surliness from the baseball corps. For that kind of invective, one would have to either tune in rancid sports talk radio or scan social media.

There was barely a night-off respite from the rabble-rancor following Thursday’s 4-0 win. While criticism of the Jays has been scattershot — rightly, because there are few beyond the stalwart bullpen who can be absolved of blame in this wretchedly disappointing season, the lightning rod for excoriation is undoubtedly Gibbons.

Why? What has the manager done or not done that’s so grotesquely responsible for the team’s poor record? How can a starting rotation ERA of 5.02, second worst in the American League, be laid at Gibbons’ doorstep? How is he responsible for defensive inertia, the Bermuda Triangle at second base, the roster-mutating injuries, the mystifying team-wide underwhelmingness?

“It’s not like it hasn’t happened before,’’ Gibbons shrugs, a reference to the rail he rode out of town mid-2008.

Perhaps it’s Gibbons’ easygoing nature that annoys the segment of Blue Jays Nation which would prefer the manager tear out his hair in frustration, kick over Gatorade jugs, grab a delinquent player by the scruff of the neck. We certainly know Gibbons has a volatile side to his nature, as expressed in a couple of physical confrontations (Ted Lilly, Shea Hillenbrand) when last he passed this way.

In fact, as Gibbons reminds, we don’t actually know how he deals with players who’ve got it coming, behind closed doors. “I have my way of handling things, usually one-on-one stuff.’’

J.P. Arencibia, far more thin-skinned than his manager, alludes to this. “He definitely lets us know when something needs to be said. I’ve been on the receiving end of it, and he’s been right on, but we’re grown men. Gibby’s not always in our clubhouse. We have to be accountable for our own actions.’’

Blaming the field manager is predictable and reactionary, though that’s the individual who inevitably walks the plank. Gibbons won’t be heaved overboard however to deal with it. As he has dealt with the horrors that nobody could have foreseen.

“It’s an emotional roller-coaster but it’s a game where you’ve got to stay balanced — to play it, to perform it. These guys have got enough pressure on them. They don’t need me breathing down their neck all the time. If there’s a lack of effort, everybody has a problem with that. But I just don’t see that.’’

Only once, maybe twice this season can the Jays be accused of outright folding — Monday’s mortifying 14-5 loss to the Dodgers fersure.

Gibbons may be too imperturbable, verging on apathetic in the opinion of some. As he readily acknowledges “You’ve got to have a heartbeat.’’

As the manager admits, some days there’s nowhere to run from the barrage of questions, the demands for explanations. He even gets the third degree from his own family: wife and three kids, headed back for San Antonio on Sunday. “(Kyle) asks me, what’s wrong with you guys? And my wife is pretty good at giving advice now too.’’

Maybe querulous fans are still miffed that a big-ticket veteran roster was not invested with a likewise marquee manager, a Joe Torre or a Tony La Russa. But his hiring is hardly his fault. More legitimate is to dispute how Gibbons has vacillated in the second-third experiment with Brett Lawrie or left flailing starters out there too long, Yet he’s also handled his ’pen deftly, until over-deployment caught up with the crew recently.

“The season hasn’t gone anywhere close to what we expected, what everybody expected,’’ Gibbons admits. “But as far as handling people, it’s a very low-maintenance group, especially compared to my earlier go-round here.

“You’ve got a lot of veteran guys who’ve been around. They get it.’’

The Jays haven’t been badly managed. They’ve simply played badly, every which way that can be measured.

“We’ve had our stretches but we really haven’t strung anything together for any length of time,’’ says Gibbons. “We haven’t pitched well enough, our defence at times has been a factor, offensively we’ve been streaky.

“We had that (winning) streak but even bad teams have streaks. There hasn’t been that consistent roll. . . . Ours has been kind of extreme, you know?’’